Hello my name is Terry, I was brought a pig keeping course back in June 2010 and within a month had some of my own, 4 Berkshires. They were housed in my back garden, A woodland wilderness full of oak trees and years of leaf litter. Within a few months I'd build another pen, another arc and purchased 3 OSBs. So now 7 pigs in all, They all seems to be doing very well. The chap that sold me the OSBs also informed me of a little livestock trailer on ebay, pleased to say I won it !!! it's turned out to be a fantastic little asset.
As the months rolled on, my by now not so little berkshires were ready for the chop, I arranged my first booking at the abattoir and asked a few people to help with the task, At this point I should explain that from the pen to the trailer was about 100 to 120 mtrs, firstly downhill, from the pen, then across a narrow bridge over a ditch, then up a quite steep climb past a few obtacles such as veg patches, decking etc. What on earth was I thnking ?? despite being really friendly pigs, and seriously believing they'd "just follow me" yeah right ! I was recommended to starve them so's they follow me and the bucket .... MMMMmmm not quite, as soon as the pen gate was open we got one of the boars out and shut the gate behind him .... as soon as he was outside he started rooting around, of course, he was hungry.... no amount of pushing, shoving, waving buckets full of food was going to make him or his brother change their minds...... After a few hours, they were stressed, I was more stressed and gave up, I rang the abattoir and cancelled...... I talked to several people including the guys I did the course wth... the recommendation was easy..... I'd been doing it all wrong !!!! all I had to do was starve them for 2 days, when I was ready to move them, walk down to the pen, don't make any eye contact, don't touch them, open the pen gate, rattle the bucket, turn and walk in the direction you want them to follow you.... simples.... Ok, when I looked over my shoulder I had all four pigs out of the pen, rooting in the best ground they been on for months and there was no way they were going to follow me ! I cancelled the abattoir again.
The best advice was from the guy I got the berkshires from, he simply said, buy some sheep hurdles ! This I did, 3 of them, and on my next attempt to get some pigs in the back if the trailer, I enlisted the help of 3 others, we each hand a corner or side of one of the hurdles, enclosed one of the pigs and basically bundled him all the way up the garden into the area behind the trailer and then shoved him in ..... followed 10 mins later by his brother....(thanks for this Steve, so simple). Off I went to the abattoir. Next impossible task ! ... how to reverse a small single axel trailer into a small gap
All I can say is that the guy at the abattoir said, "you have all day, no-one else is here" we had seen a few mm of snow and being on the south coast meant that it was chaos. Things they never told me on the course
Taking pigs to the abatoir in the run up to Christmas.... check that you have a butcher who is willing to cut them up for you ! The one thing I didn't even think of at the time, why would I
this time of year, there isn't a butcher that has time to do this or cold store space to keep your sides for you !! I ended up taking them all the way to Wiltshire just to have them cold stored until he had time to butcher them.
Much to my horror, everyone who looked at the sides or pork made comments like " crikey did you feed 'em everytime you passed 'em " etc etc....
No, I fed them on the recommended amount for their age ! so how had I produced pigs of 104 and 105 kgs with 50 mm of fat on them.
I can only presume that my garden had provided them with years of acorns, something I now realise a year later when I saw just how many acorns drop.
Winter 2010 / 2011 left me with no choice but to re-locate, I nearly had to teach the pigs how to swim as they had now rooted down past all the topsoil, I found my garden was clay, which months of rain plus a few pigs had turned into slurry that wasn't going anywhere. I was really fortunate to be a member of a local community farm so I asked the farmer if he could let me have some space for my pigs, I'd always intended to keep a berkshire and OSB gilt for breeding from. The farmer agreed and I put up 2 pens along a hedgerow.... perfectly flat land, can back the trailer up to the gates.... I now have 4 pens, my berkshire had her first lot of piglets (13) in Aug 2011, my OSB hers in Sept (9) both were great during the birth and excellent mums.... So, despite all the difficulties, having a full time job, the price of food, the frozen water pipe, the cold, the wet the dark mornings and evenings ...... I love em and can honestly say I really enjoy looking after them. I don't profess to know everyting aout them, I learn new stuff everyday but isn't that how we all start
Sorry to go on and on just wanted to let you know how it all started.... thanks for reading.... cheers Terry